


Like Sleep To The Freezing

by Cohens_Girl



Series: On A Wire [2]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Angst, Dark, M/M, So much angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-11
Updated: 2016-12-11
Packaged: 2018-09-07 21:48:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8817433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cohens_Girl/pseuds/Cohens_Girl
Summary: How did it ever come to this?





	

**Author's Note:**

> Slight spoilers for the main quests; you'll need to have completed the memory den for this to make sense. It follows vaguely from Like Rum On The Fire, so I stuck them in a series. This got written when my laptop died, and I thought I'd lost everything on there forever, hence why it's um...Yeah, it's not happy.
> 
> Hancock's POV this time.
> 
> Warnings: Plenty of foul language, mentions of drug use, and Hancock generally not knowing what the Hell to do with himself.

 

 

 

 

 

The sky crackles neon green; the air swells, dry and sharp and sickening. You turn your face up and into it, brace yourself against the shell of the empty window and shudder as the ice-heat chill trembles through your bone-marrow, gnaws inside your flesh. It's a familiar pain, an old wound you like to scrape raw, now and then - something to balance out the new, convulsive agony you seem to have discovered through the man lying quiet next to you.

 

You'd given up on finding anything beautiful in the wasteland : that's the truth of it. You see enough death and decay - spend enough time watching the skin melt off your own bones - and it changes a man. The lens you view the world through grows so dark, you forget what it means to find something bright, something worth opening your eyes to see.

 

Nate. Goddamn poster-boy for pre-war idealism - those big, dark eyes and that easy smile.

 

_Asshole._

 

How did it ever come to this?

 

*

 

Sex used to be so _easy,_ even for you; no one has ever cared about the black pits of your eyes so long as you were warm and your dick was working. Never had any trouble finding a willing body. Never felt like you were _wanting_ for anything. Then this guy lays himself out beneath you, bambi-eyed and so fucking trusting; shit, the long, clean cut of his limbs, the glow of his skin – the impossible honesty in every hiss and whimper, every whisper of your name.

 

He didn't shrink from your flesh-less flesh, didn't flinch at the singe of the rad-burns you left littered along his chest. He only grappled for _more, more, more,_ shy and pleading, and so beautiful.

 

There was no going back. He might not know this world well enough, yet, but you do. Every other living being has been tainted by his fucking flawlessness.

 

No one else ever felt so soft and fresh and whole in your hands; no one else ever touched you like you were worth something.

 

You know what it meant, how hard it was for him to do that; to re-write a lifetime of learning and offer everything he'd never had like it wasn't the most terrifying fucking thing. To actually let himself enjoy it, to smile at you and tell you that it was good, it was perfect - that _you_ were perfect, more than he could ever deserve.

 

How the Hell could anyone ever go back from that?

 

*

 

You settle his hand in your lap, so used to those fragile fingers holding on to the hem of your shirt, even in sleep. Poor bastard, always afraid of losing more than he's already lost.

 

It would be sweet, if it wasn't so fucking tragic - maybe you'd even feel angry for him, if you didn't already feel so fucking _sad_.

 

*

 

You'd kill Nick with your own hands, if you had the heart for it; if, even for a moment, you didn't fully believe that the beat-up old synth loves the kid almost as much as you do.

 

He should have known better. Should have seen that his plan was stupid from the very beginning – hey, lets pop a chip from some dead guy's brain into your consciousness and watch your head explode! - it was something dumb like that, you figure, but it isn't like you were consulted on it. Not like anyone gave you a fucking chance to say er, how about _no_ , we'll find _another_ _way -_ a way that doesn't involve Nate cracking his ribs open and offering his heart up on a fucking platter.

 

But that thorn of grief that has been steadily working deeper and deeper into Nate's bloodstream had reared it's ugly head and Nick is – well shit, he's just too damn soft. Truth be told, with Kellog lying dead at his feet and Shaun long since gone, the kid's face had been so – so _raw,_ just, fuck, so ripped-open with pain that you could almost see the jagged seams of his broken smile. You can hardly blame Nick for his dumbshit ideas when you would have offered anything to ease it, too, if you'd had even a single inkling of what to do.

 

_I've lost him_ : you've never heard anyone's voice shatter quite like that, before or since. God, _Nate_. It was those words that put you all on the path that led to this place; it was obvious from the stupid robot's face. No mistaking the grim line of his mouth, the steely set to his eyes - or the way that metal-boned palm clamped tight around vault-boy's shoulder.

 

You don't know what Nick's investment is in getting Shaun back to Nate and you don't want to, don't want to consider that you are one of many moths to the same bright flame.

 

It doesn't really matter. Chances are Shaun is lost, irretrievably, and Nate is gonna tear himself to pieces trying to find the boy; the last thing he needs is a helping hand. Nick should have known better – but just like everyone else, he's so desperate to help he thoughtlessly throws himself against each and every one of Nate's sharp edges until he's cut all to Hell, till he's bleeding so bad he can't see who else he might be hurting. He's become so desperate to _fix the kid_ he's forgotten which way is up, forgotten to stop and think things through rather than _connecting someone's brain to a god-damn computer chip._

 

And just what did you do to stop it?

 

Nothing. All you did was stand there, helpless, impotent, watching the man you've come to prioritize above all else writhing in his chair, forced to relive the single most traumatic experience of his life.

 

"I can't watch this again." Nate had said, plaintive, the words muffled by the glass but audible enough to hear his voice cracking around every syllable. It wasn't the words that frightened you, though, it was the gut feeling when he said them - the way your brain had short-circuited, howling : get him _out, out, out!_

 

But it was too late by then. He was already beating his bloody fists into the glass, trapped in his own living nightmare.

 

Your Nate never stepped out of that pod and you know it. He'd lost something in that moment - _I_ can't _watch this again -_ had been forced to rip it out and leave it torn and bleeding in that fucking chair, just to survive.

 

He'd repeated the words later, head crushed between his palms and pupils blown,

 

"I can't watch this again, Hancock, please, please, please-" and even if the Med-X had killed him then, you'd have thought it a mercy. You'd have thought it a god-damn _gift_ , the shape he was in.

 

You didn't know what he'd already drunk, what he'd already taken; only that as his eyes fluttered shut and his breath rushed out between too-white lips, he'd almost looked human again.

 

He'd thanked you, soft, like he was saying goodbye. The asshole had thanked you and you had gathered him up and cradled him to you, the way you should have in the first place, before you reached for the _fucking_ needle. You'd pressed your lips against his jugular and felt his pulse jumping, faint and off-beat; whispered nonsense into his skin like it might sink in, somehow, fill his flesh with all the words you'd never known how to say.

 

When the sun had risen, slight and silver through the mold-stained curtains, you'd simply held him there, numb, and thought of nothing.

 

*

 

There should be more than this. More to your life than the quiet voices on the street below, or the shift and creak of the walls. More than a window with no glass in it and hard chair beneath your thighs, more than the desperately thin life-sounds coming from the bed beside you - the gasp and huff of patternless breaths that might, at any second, come to a complete halt. More than this awful, empty silence reverberating through your skull, this terrible vacuum in place of sense and purpose.

 

You were the god-damn _mayor._ You were doing _good things_ here and now – now -

 

You gave up everyone and everything you knew for a damn _popsicle._

 

Just what the Hell were you thinking?

 

*

 

The worst part is, you know what you were thinking; you'd give it all up again in a heartbeat, for just another hour with him. To witness that fucking _compassion,_ to hear him laugh or be held in his arms one more time – you'd give it all and more, if he would just open his eyes.

 

*

 

Lightning flashes, lime and luminescent, through a crack in the shanty wall. You sit silent, a sepulcher to the last shreds of his sanity, watching the steady rise and fall of his chest. Not five weeks ago you told him you weren't going anywhere and he couldn't even look you in the face – it wasn't until hours later that he had grinned unsteady at you with wet eyes and said, _me either, y'know._

 

You can see it now like it was mere moments ago, that look on his face, so vulnerable and so fucking happy.

 

God- _damn_ it.

 

You can't help but feel that you trusted him, and he's betrayed you.

 

_I ain't goin' anywhere,_ that's what you said, and you meant it – and maybe he was still whole, then, and you could hold him all together in just the breadth of your arms - but nothing has changed.

 

You will sit here until his bones turn to dust.

 

There is no going back.

 

*

 

He rolls over in his sleep, sighs a breath that skitters over your knuckles.

 

“H'ncock.” He mumbles. “Mmmn. S'okay. S'okay.”

 

Your tear-ducts are scarred beyond recognition but there's no denying the wetness on your face, or the hot spear that twists in your gut.

 

He's alive – and that ought to be something. Enough food and water and sleep and your constant protection will see that it stays that way, for the next few hours, at least.

 

But it isn't okay. It isn't.

 

*

 

His fingers find the hem of your shirt in the darkness and cling there. You try, with all that you have, to simply breathe.

 

*

 

Tomorrow, he will get up; he will brush himself off and smile at you even as his heart bleeds in his chest. You know this. He will get up and he'll walk it off and try, all over again, to face the world anew.

 

But he will never survive it, this time that wasn't meant for him. It will destroy him, in the end.

 

And where does that leave you?

 

*

 


End file.
